Notes: Thank you for all of your comments! :) We will meet Jack again in the next chapter, and he'll clue Sharon in to what he wants this time.
When the Winds of Changes Shift
rosabelle
Chapter X
When Rusty stumbled out of his room on Sunday morning, Sharon was gone. She'd left a note for him taped to the bathroom door, written in large letters on paper that was really, really pink. Rusty squinted at it. He had no idea where she'd gotten the paper from.
Running errands. Back this afternoon. Didn't want to wake you. Call if you need me.
She should've just texted him.
Which reminded him that his phone was still on his nightstand, and he went back for it. He had no new messages. Rusty rolled his eyes and slipped it into the pocket of his pajama pants, and pulled the note from the bathroom door as he passed. He took it with him into the kitchen, crumpling the paper between his hands. There was another note taped to the fridge. Same message, neon orange paper.
Seriously, where had the paper come from?
... but Rusty had to admit that he didn't always remember to check his phone first thing after waking, and it was a safe bet that his first stop would be either the kitchen or the bathroom.
He threw both notes into the recycling can beneath the sink, and began opening cabinets in search of breakfast. In the end, he used the last of the bacon and the last of the cheese to make himself an omelette and smothered it beneath what Sharon would call half a bottle of ketchup and he would call a perfectly reasonable amount. He set his phone on the table beside him, his eyes drifting towards it as he ate.
He'd sort of hoped that his mother would call.
He wasn't sure why he'd expected her to.
When his phone buzzed, he almost dropped his fork in his hurry to pick it up. He felt a flash of disappointment that it wasn't his mother, followed by a more lingering sensation of guilt, because it wasn't like he didn't want Sharon to talk to him, either.
Need anything while I'm out?
No, he sent back. Where'd you go?
Her response came quickly. He could almost hear her exasperation. Didn't you see my note?
Rusty made a face at his phone. You could save the environment by texting.
When his phone buzzed again, he reached for it expecting her to have snarked back at him, so sure that it was her that when he saw it wasn't, he tilted his head and frowned at his phone in confusion.
great to see you yestrday :)
His mother had reached out to him after all, just like he'd been hoping, and he had no idea what to do now. Rusty stared at that for a long time before answering. Me too.
He'd really thought that he would feel... more.
What was wrong with him? He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His mom had come back. It was practically the only thing that he'd wished for, for three years. He'd gotten it. His mother had come back for him, and she was okay, she was getting better, and she was sorry.
And he was just...
Just...
He didn't know what he was.
His phone buzzed again. got time 4 a phone call?
Rusty swallowed. Part of him wanted to call her. Part of him wanted to turn off the phone and leave it there while he went to hide in his room.
But... it had been a really, really long time since his mother had wanted to spend time with him.
Rusty dialed the phone.
She answered on the first ring. "Hey."
She sounded tired, and he was used to that, but then she sounded so happy, and he'd almost forgotten that her voice did that.
"Hey," he said quietly.
"How are you, baby?"
The endearment made him cringe. He tried not to, because he shouldn't, but he couldn't help it, and it made him hesitant to respond. "I just had breakfast."
"Anything good?"
"Omelette." He wondered if she remembered that he used to make them for her.
"I just finished dinner," said. "I've gotta go to bed soon—stayed with you too long yesterday, I only got a few hours of sleep before work."
"You should've—"
"No," she said. "No, I wanted to see you, Rusty. I really, really did."
"Me too." He swallowed hard, feeling his eyes burn. "I missed you so much."
Whatever else, that was true.
Silence fell after that. Maybe she didn't know what to say, either. There were so many things that Rusty wanted to know. So many questions that he needed answers to, and he was too afraid to ask them because he was afraid of what those answers might be.
Why did you leave me?
That was the big one.
What if it really was his fault, after all?
Maybe when he'd hit Gary, she'd thought that he would turn out to be just like him. Just like all of the others. Maybe he'd scared her. He'd been so angry. Rusty couldn't even remember what they had argued about, the night that he'd finally snapped and hit Gary as hard as he could. Hard enough to break his nose. He only knew that it had been so stupid, and later, when he'd stood frozen in the empty apartment, hardly able to breathe and his heart in his stomach, he would have given anything to be able to take it back.
He needed her to know that he wasn't like that anymore. Once she knew that he'd changed, maybe then he would ask her. If he was ever brave enough.
The silence was the most uncomfortable thing.
He should say something.
She beat him to it. "What are you doing later this week?"
He tried to distance himself from his thoughts. "Nothing?"
"If you want to, I know a place. They've got good coffee. I could meet you after work sometime."
"That sounds... great." Only then did he wonder just how long she had been back in LA. Her first message had made it sound like she'd just gotten there, but if she had a job and roommates and favorite coffee places...
Was she already lying to him?
He reminded himself that he hadn't asked.
"Do you drink coffee?"
"Sharon says—" Rusty winced, and tried to cover his slip. "She says I drink caffeinated sugar."
He was going to have to be more careful. The less he told either of them about the other, the better for everyone. Especially with his mother. Sharon was unhappy about everything, but she was always... steady. His mother... just wasn't, and if he upset her...
But to his relief, she only laughed. "They've got that too. I usually get off work around eight. If that's too early for you..."
"No," he said. "That's fine. I usually go to work in the afternoons."
"Just let me know when you're free, then."
"I will," he promised. He might have said more, but the sound of keys turning in the lock startled him, and he realized that the last thing he wanted to be doing when Sharon came in was be overheard talking with his mother. "I've got to go, Mom."
"I should probably get to bed, anyway," she said, and it wasn't like he could hang up on her when she was getting ready to say goodbye, but Sharon was already inside, and if he just got up and went to his room, that would be so obvious. "Love you."
"Yeah." But then he felt like a huge asshole for not saying it back, so he mumbled, "I love you too" as quietly as he could before hanging up.
He heard Sharon set her keys down in the hall.
"Hey."
"Hey." She came into his line of sight, and of course her eyes landed on the phone still in his hand. "Who were you talking to?"
"No one."
Sharon arched an eyebrow, her look clearly asking him who he thought he was fooling. "Was that—"
"Yeah."
"How—"
"Fine."
He saw a muscle in her jaw twitch.
"Sorry," he muttered. He'd been saying that an awful lot lately.
"Rusty." She gave him an unreadable look. "I'm glad that your meeting with your mother went well."
"Thanks," he said quietly. "That... thanks."
He watched her go into the kitchen, hesitating while she pulled a glass from the cabinet. He wasn't sure that saying anything would help. At all.
"Sharon?" he ventured, over the sound of water pouring.
She took a sip of her drink, looking at him expectantly from the kitchen.
"You know that, like.. that I—I really appreciate everything that you've done for me, right?"
Her look turned sad as she came to sit beside him at the head of the table, glass still in hand. "I know."
"Because you really didn't have to do any of that, and I do—" He shrugged, staring down at the empty plate in front of him. "I do know that."
"I know," Sharon repeated. "Rusty, whatever happens with your mother..."
It was his turn to say it. "I know."
She didn't smile. "And I hope you know that whatever... difficulties I might have with this situation, none of them have a thing to do with you."
Rusty wasn't sure if that helped or not.
Because he knew that Sharon worried about him. It was what she did. Sometimes it irritated him because there was literally nothing to worry about (though privately, he knew that this happened less often than he was willing to admit to her), but usually when Sharon worried, there was a reason.
He was worried too.
"All right?" she prompted.
He nodded his head.
He thought she might've smiled, then.
"Where'd you go, anyway?" He hoped she would take the hint.
She did. "I took some clothes to be dry cleaned."
"Did you go to the store?"
Her expression turned exasperated. "I asked if you needed anything. "
At least she wasn't worried anymore? He offered her his most sheepish look. "I... forgot?"
"The dry cleaning will be done later today," she said at last. "Come with me when I pick it up. We can go then."
Rusty was an in-and-out kind of shopper. Or he would have been, if left to his own devices. Everything took longer with Sharon, because she insisted he do things like try on clothes before she paid for them and she liked to look at things, but even so, he figured that he would grab the two most integral ingredients of bacon cheeseburgers, Sharon would pick up whatever she wanted, and they would be on their way.
But no, Sharon wanted to make this dinnertime grocery run worth her trouble, even though the store was getting more crowded by the minute. The lines stretched from the register to the back of the store, and they had surpassed the fifteen item express lane limit ten minutes ago, when Sharon decided to take advantage of a sale on refried beans. Half off, up to ten cans. When did they ever make burritos?
Rusty pulled out his phone.
Grocery shopping was boring, okay? It was worse than boring when he was hungry and watching Sharon read the ingredient labels on tea boxes. Who did that? It was tea. Tea was the ingredient. Besides the natural flavors or whatever, but no one knew what those were.
And there were, like, fifty different kinds of tea.
This was going to take the rest of his life.
He knew he was too old to whine, but he was wrestling with the urge to do it anyway.
He'd made it as far as Facebook when Sharon took him by the arm and dragged him out of the way of a passing cart. "Rusty..."
She didn't need to finish.
Rusty mumbled an apology under his breath and slid the phone back into his pocket.
"Thank you." Sharon spared him a distracted glance before she returned to studying the tea selection. "You were the one who insisted we come here. I'm almost done."
Right.
He stepped so that he was standing at the foot of their cart and not in the middle of the aisle, and pulled out his phone again. Sharon didn't say anything.
His mother had tagged him her most recent Facebook status. Good talk with Rusty, followed by a smiley face and several hearts.
He stared at that for a long time.
He was glad, he guessed, that she was so happy to see him. He was glad to see her too.
But now, he wondered if he'd been to preoccupied with that first reunion to really think about what would happen after, because he couldn't figure out what to say to her or what she wanted from him. They hardly knew each other anymore.
Rusty sighed, and went back to his games. That, at least, was a welcome distraction from both of his Sharons, and he had been stuck on level seventy-seven of Candy Crush for forever. Months. It was kind of embarrassing, really, when his friends were all at level two hundred. That was another problem he couldn't bring to Sharon. She would congratulate him on rotting his brain at a slower pace than his peers were rotting theirs.
He was still squinting at the screen when Sharon touched his arm. She said something to him, too, but it didn't sound like "put your phone away and pay attention," so he just nodded his head without tearing his eyes away from the game. He had three moves left and one life to spare.
They were gone before he knew it, and that was also really annoying because everyone kept telling him it was all about logic and how was he so good at chess if he couldn't beat this much easier game. Rusty slid the phone back into his pocket with an annoyed huff, and looked up, ready to ask Sharon if she'd narrowed down the five hundred choices to the ones she actually drank and could they please leave already, when...
She wasn't there.
His heart stopped.
Rusty turned in a complete circle just to be sure, because, seriously, there was an awful lot of tea. But there was no sign of her there, nor further down the aisle when he tried to peer around the other shoppers crowding it. Someone ran their cart right over his food without noticing.
He stumbled back, steadying himself against his cart, his and Sharon's cart, the one that Sharon had spent forty-five minutes filling, the one that she was sure to come right back for...
Blood pounded in his ears, and remembered words came in time with his heartbeat.
"—never listen to me—"
No, he told himself. Nonono, it was okay, it was all right, he ignored Sharon all the time over things way more important than this, and she had never left him before...
"—don't know what to do with you—"
... but everyone had a breaking point, didn't they, and maybe this was Sharon's, maybe she was finally fed up and tired of him, maybe this was the tipping point on the scale measuring whether he was a good kid or not, maybe...
Sweat crawled down his spine and between his fingers. His hands tingled, in a strange, surreal way that felt both hot and cold together.
He should have known, should have expected it, should have behaved.
There was no air in his lungs.
He hunched over the cart, slick fingers curling around the handle, and drew in shallow breaths through his mouth but his throat felt paralyzed. He couldn't take a deep enough breath, and he was getting dizzy...
And then Sharon was there, appearing in the time it took him to blink, and she was saying something but there was an odd ringing in his ears and the shapes her mouth moved in made no sense to him...
But he knew the moment that she noticed something was wrong, because her mouth abruptly shut. She seized his arm and hauled him out of the store, past a hundred people who had to be staring at him, wondering what the hell his problem was.
The next thing he knew, he was sitting, doubled over and clutching his knees and still struggling to breathe. Sharon's hand settled gently between his shoulder blades, her thumb caressing the back of his neck.
"Breathe," she murmured. Her head was bent close to his, close enough that he could feel her breath on his ear, and he could still hardly understand the words she was saying. "Exhale. That's it."
He would have liked to shake off her hand and tell her that he was fine, that he didn't need her to talk him through making his nervous system function because it just did that automatically, but... he needed it like he couldn't believe. They stayed that way while his head cleared, him bent over his lap with his head hanging low and Sharon sitting beside him., smoothing circles into his back.
The careful back and forth of her fingers slowed when Rusty raised his head again, but Sharon didn't move her hand away. "Are you okay?"
His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. Rusty nodded.
And then, the question that he'd been dreading. "What happened?"
He lowered his head.
This wasn't the first time he'd freaked out in public. He'd done it in a store once, when Sharon took him back-to-school shopping. He'd been fine, just digging through all the spiral notebooks looking for ones that didn't look like they were meant for kindergarteners when he'd looked up and come face-to-face with one of his repeat customers. With his wife. And his kids.
Afterwards, he'd wondered if it was even the same guy. It was hard to be sure. In the moment, though, he had been certain, and part of him had wanted to confront the guy and tell his wife how he'd gotten an extra twenty dollars to help figure out how to put the carseat back.
Instead, he'd dropped everything and run, as fast as he could, just sprinted blindly for anywhere that wasn't there. He'd been halfway down the block when Sharon caught up with him with no real memory of getting there, feeling like he could throw up at any moment.
She'd wanted to know what was wrong then, too.
He couldn't remember what he'd told her. He hadn't lied, he didn't think, but he certainly hadn't told her the whole truth—what if she'd gone back in there to talk to the guy? What if she'd arrested him, and he'd had to tell everybody? Wasn't it bad enough that he already had to talk about what he'd been doing with Doug in Griffith Park that one night?
He'd really hoped that he was past all that.
"Rusty?"
She sounded so worried.
"I—" He swallowed a few times experimentally and looked down at his knees while he scuffed his toe along the sidewalk in front of him.
Had this bench always been here?
"Just... don't take this the wrong way, okay?"
She made a quiet sound of assent.
"You weren't there," he whispered, and braced himself. Because of all the idiotic reasons to lose his head, he was sure that had to rank near the top of the list. He was eighteen. He'd managed to convince Sharon that he could handle being used as bait for a serial killer. He should be able to deal with someone stepping away from him for two seconds without having a breakdown.
Sharon took her time replying, resuming the careful motion of her hand between his shoulder blades. "I'm here now," she said at last, and squeezed his shoulder.
"I know." When had tears gathered in his eyes? He tried to blink them away without being completely obvious about it, because he was beginning to remember that there were still people all around them. "I'm... sorry about..."
"Don't even worry about it."
"But..." But this whole trip had been his idea. She hadn't wanted to come at all, and now she'd wasted an hour because he was an idiot.
"Okay," she said. "If there's anything that you absolutely need tonight, we'll go back in. If there isn't, we'll go find some dinner and you can come back tomorrow. How's that sound?"
And that, right there, was how she got away with being frustrating and impossible. Because when he needed something, when he really needed something, she gave it to him without him needing to ask.
He drew in a deep breath and hoped it wasn't thick with repressed tears when he exhaled.
"Better?" she asked quietly. When he nodded, she gave his shoulder another squeeze before drawing her hand away.
"I'm sorry," he told her again. It all seemed so stupid now. "You're not my mom, Sharon. You're—you're nothing like her. You wouldn't..."
Abandon him at a zoo without a goodbye. Expect him to defend her from anyone. Trade him for five hundred dollars. Let anyone so much as look at him in a way she didn't like.
He could feel his chest tightening again, constricting painfully with each breath he took. Rusty grit his teeth and shied away from Sharon's worried hand on his arm, forcing himself to breathe. He could feel sweat forming on the back of his neck again.
But his mom hadn't always been like that, he reminded himself, and it hadn't been easy for her, either. She'd done the best that she could with what she had to work with, and it wasn't her fault that that hadn't been much. He'd been lucky. He'd ended up with Sharon. His mom had ended up alone, with him to take care of.
He had to remember that.
He shouldn't judge her.
He shouldn't be angry with her.
He just... shouldn't.
"Let's go home," Sharon said quietly. "We'll worry about dinner when we get there."
He wasn't the slightest bit hungry, but the easiest thing to do was to stand and follow Sharon back to the car. They walked slowly, her hand on his arm the entire way there.